“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards.” ― Rudyard Kipling, Under The Deodars

We pretend to be all put together and grown up. It’s a front. A sneaky, lying, cheating front.

Ducklings, our house is a disaster zone – I can confess this and you won’t think badly of us. J.’s suitcases are still spread everywhere, sweaters are piled on the couch, we still haven’t folding the load of whites we did before we left for Arizona, and we just barely got around to doing dishes last night. At which point J. requested cookies so we made a mess of the kitchen and stayed up late with cookies and milk watching Dr. Who, refusing to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Adulthood and responsibility, fah!

However this current state has side effects. For example, with all this travel (not to mention a trip to London upcoming during the Summer of the Jubilee/Olympics) our finances have sort of fallen over wheezing and begged us to stop. We’re allowing ourselves the chance to eat out once a week, although we’re choosing not to exercise this privilege currently, and restricting entertainment to Redbox and card games. Of course, I’ve been mostly cooking for one for the past nine months and am remembering exactly how much food the guy I’m married to consumes – woof.

So, in an effort to make a lot of good food at one go to give us lunches for a few days, I whipped up a crockpot full of chicken fajitas. And you’ll excuse me for patting myself on the back when I say that they were delicious. Minions would have wept in joy to have tasted them. However we waited for the food to cool a bit before putting it away – and then forgot about it. J.’s first words to me the next morning when we woke up were, “Did we put dinner in the fridge last night?” My first words were, ah, unfit to print here as I scrambled for the kitchen and discovered I’d manage to waste a ton of food.

My brain is clearly having trouble reengaging after all my bouncing around and living out of suitcases. Tonight, though, it’s getting a break as we say farewell to J.’s old flatmate as he and his wife head off to grad school – and that means a barbeque! One more meal I don’t have to cook, and potentially ruin. Even I can manage to whip up a communal salad without incident.